The present invention relates to a fire control device for aiming of weapons, particularly anti-aircraft guns, at a target which is to be fired upon.
Such a fire control device usually includes a sighting device with which the direction and range to the target can be measured and also a fire control calculator. On the basis of the values obtained from the sighting device of the direction and range to the target and other necessary data, such as the movement of the target, wind conditions, parallax etc., the fire control calculator calculates the necessary data for aiming of the weapon with which the target is to be fired upon.
Fire control equipment for anti-aircraft guns hitherto used has been of two kinds; the equipment has either been placed on the gun or else the equipment has been placed separate from the gun, wherein data from the fire control equipment is transmitted by means of cables to the gun, which is remotely controlled from the fire control equipment. Both of these methods involve certain disadvantages. A fire control device placed on the gun can only control the gun on which it is placed. A separate set of fire control equipment is therefore required for each gun, which involves a high cost for the system. The other alternative is to place the fire control equipment separate from the gun. The equipment can then control several guns simultaneously, but difficulties are then encountered with the accuracy of the system, as the sighting equipment and the guns must be aligned very accurately when setting up the system. This applies to both levelling of the sight and guns as well as the transverse setting.
A further difficulty confronting known prior art devices is that the angle transmission from the sight to the guns must have a high degree of accuracy. The transmission can take place with so-called synchros with fine and coarse systems, but this requires the use of either heavy transmission cables with many conductors, or transmission with pulse code modulation on a double conductor, which involves complicated extra equipment.